A week ago this morning we were watching the creek rise around and under our home, unable yet to comprehend the scale of how it was playing out in the rest of the valley.
The community has decided to conduct our business meetings (usually once/month) on M, W, F. We host large information sharing meetings for the broader community (over 100 people have been showing up at those) Tu, Th, Sat. We will have a sabbath from meetings on Sunday. Tonight we’ll feast on thawing venison and other goodies from people’s freezer. The rest of the day we’ll spend hooking up generators and cutting drywall from homes and pulling out wet insulation.
If Day 5 was the day that it began to sink in about how grim the situation is in various corners of the county, then Day 6 was the day our community in the middle of the South Toe Valley began to see hints of light at the end of the tunnel. Main roads are becoming marginally passable, tons of relief supplies are making their way in via helicopter and pick-up truck.
Helicopter activity begins late in the morning and ramps up over the course of the afternoon, peaking right when we convene our afternoon briefings between 4 and 5. Large military helicopters have flown over — perhaps to the Cane River Valley? — and dozens of smaller choppers circle and land, sometimes at South Toe Elementary (1 mile south) or even the Celo soccer field in the heart of the community. I’m sure other locales in the valley are getting a lot of choppers too — I imagine Busick is still the hardest to reach by road since NC80’s route south over the Parkway is still cut off.
I heard a firsthand account of a surreal moment when a congressman from Florida dropped onto the soccer field for a photo-op, announcing to the handful of individuals present that he knew a thing or two about helping with hurricanes. He asked if anyone needed an urgent evacuation, and when wasn’t offered forward, he flew off to find a proper victim, photographer in tow. By the time he had arrived on Day 5, South Toe Fire and Rescue had already efficiently shuttled numerous evacuees out of the valley.
There are also helicopters that seem to be surveying damage. Media? Federal or state assessments? There must be some kind of treatment algorithm that the outside disaster relievers are following, but things still feel very chaotic on the ground. Yet in reality, a lot of sh-t is getting done. Through the fog of chaos, roads are quickly being pasted together. These are all temporary fixes (our community’s main bridge is a perfect example). One crosses what essentially amounts to a 15 foot pile of river rock, gravel, sand and mud on each end of the bridge to enter the main span. The day after it was “fixed,” it rained a half inch and those patches softened considerably; we continue to keep an eye out to make sure they don’t slump further.
The fog of chaos also seems to be clearing somewhat. South Toe Fire and Rescue, aka the South Toe Volunteer Fire Department is really showing their stuff. I cannot fathom the number of hours that they have collectively poured into this effort. About a half dozen members are in my circle of friends, and I’ve barely seen them in the past few days as they shuttle evacuees, goods and essential services (for instance, filling oxygen tanks at a local glassblower’s studio for folks on oxygen at isolated homes), and basically coordinate the entire relief effort in the valley.
The tight, decidedly analogue network of graders and loggers in the valley have also really come through, evidenced by the fact that many of the main valley roads, at least north of here, are somewhat passable. There was even an older gentleman on a bulldozer, doing a secondary grading of Hannah Branch Rd. Perhaps he was contracted by NCDOT? The first grading was done on Day 2 by Celo Community members with tractors — making it possible for pick-ups to travel on one lane of mud, sand, and rock.
HBR is the mile-long gravel road through the community that follows the east bank of the river. I reckon they are scraping up every last man with a machine to put this county back together. As one of the only flattish gravel roads of significant length in the county, HBR helps create a community that is incredibly walkable considering its population density of only 80 people in 2 sq miles. It also attracts others from the valley — a roadway that is safe for kids to learn to bike and for folks to walk along the river, side-by-side, on beautiful, easy terrain. Perhaps the fact that it has never been paved made it more resilient. I’ve seen firsthand less than 10 miles of paved road in the county — and not the worst miles by any stretch — and I can see that it will be a bear to get them back into stable condition.
Like our road, the community itself has long cultivated an ethic of strong community and simple living. These defining features make us incredibly resilient. The broader community, the backbone of which is comprised of local families with several generations of history in the Toe River Valley, is proving to be similarly resilient. There are plenty of people still living here who grew up without flush toilets and hot & cold running water. A generation earlier spring boxes would have been the primary way to keep milk cool. I’ve been told that when Ernest Morgan installed an internal phone line at AMS in the early ‘60s, it was one of the first of its kind in this part of the valley.
As generators begin to trickle into the community, and word spreads of power restoration a mere 3 miles down the road, it becomes clear that the return of electricity serves as a community mood stabilizer. I recognize that our home is in a unique position of privilege, with a creek nearby that I’ve always used to meet some refrigeration needs. The creek, until the river became tame enough two days ago, provided my evening bath, and continues to provide easy access water for toilet tanks.
On Day 3, I discovered that our well water system is gravity-fed to our yard hydrant. I’d always thought that if we really needed to, we could rig up a gravity line from a spring about 400 yards uphill from the house, but having a gravity fed well is more than sufficient for now. The well is about 60 yards from the house — perhaps about 10’ in elevation uphill. Evidently, static pressure pushes the head of water in our 200’ deep well pretty close to the top. There’s not enough elevation to get the water into our house, but it is enough to push a good flow of water through our yard hydrant, mere steps from our front porch.
A neighbor runs a generator 3 hrs a day, which is enough to pump their well and keep 3 households of frozen goods frozen. We use thawing jugs of broth in the little freezer on top of our fridge to keep it cool enough for milk, cheese, and yogurt. I milked yesterday, and at Camp Celo, you can fire a generator to provide water for milk pails.
We heard news late yesterday that the electrical grid is showing signs of life in our mountain valley. Our valley is about 15 miles long, with Micaville and Newdale on one end, Busick and the Blue Ridge Parkway on the other, and communities like Celo and Hamrick in between. Lots of tiny satellite communities line the various creeks, from Brown’s Crk to the north (downstream), and Rock Crk to the south (upstream). Supposedly there is now power somewhere along the main trunk line that follows Hwy 80S between Celo and Micaville, and there are reports of lights turning on in Hamrick, just a couple miles south of here. The main trunk line that was upgraded about 12 years ago and has largely avoided widespread outages ever since, was clearly down in some places, but perhaps has been restored. There are still many, many “last mile” branches and even more drop lines to houses that will need to be repaired over the coming days and weeks.
I have a lot of ambivalence about the possible return of power, especially now that friends hooked us up with a two burner propane campstove, making cooking far easier than it was on our little backpacking stoves. More on that in a future post.
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